Andrey's 24 Hour No Money Back Laundromat
by gveret
Summary: The first time they met, Kara was in her underwear, and Lena's clothes were covered in blood. And that's how it all started. (Or: 5 times Kara ran into Bloody Laundry Woman at Andrey's Laundromat. Plus one other time, maybe.)
1. Chapter 1

**Note:** Based on this tumblr prompt: _'i'm in my underpants in a laundromat waiting for my clothes to get washed and your clothes are in the machine next to mine and i noticed that when you put your clothes in they were all covered in blood what the fuck' au_

 **Warning** for mentions of violence, descriptions of injury and some accidental (kind of?) exhibitionism.

This is part 1 of 2. Next part will be up within the next few days.

* * *

 **1**

Kara only went to Andrey's self-serve 24 hour (no money back) Laundromat when she was absolutely desperate. So, every other week or so.

Through no fault of her own, every once in a while, none of the shirts she'd sniff would smell acceptable and she'd remember she'd forgotten to do the laundry. She just hadn't been born with that organizational time management gene people like Alex had. Or maybe it was an app or something.

At 2 a.m. on a Tuesday, Andrey's was completely empty, and since Kara had nothing but dirty clothes, she saw no reason not to put _all_ of them in. Stripping out of her smelly t-shirt and stained jeans and selecting the eco wash program, Kara almost felt like a responsible, functioning adult.

An hour or so later, after her clothes were done washing and Kara had popped them in the dryer, a stranger entered the laundromat.

She appeared to be a woman, maybe around Kara's age, with dark hair and business casual clothes. Beautiful, but otherwise unremarkable. And then she crouched down, placed a large canvas bag beside her, and began pulling out one blood soaked clothing item after another and stuffing them into the wash.

This wasn't a cut finger or scraped knee or even a dog bite to the leg kind of bloody. This was slasher movie, chainsaws and buckets of viscera bloody. The smell of iron was noticeable in the air.

"Hey," Kara called, approaching the stranger carefully. "Are you okay?"

"Mm?" the stranger hummed absentmindedly, cramming yet more bloody garments into the machine.

"Your clothes are covered in blood," Kara pointed out gently.

"Mm," the stranger agreed. "It isn't mine."

Kara peered down at her. "Are you a werewolf?"

" _What?_ " The stranger's head snapped up, twisting to look at Kara. She was crouching, and her gaze naturally caught on the nearest point of interest in her line of sight: Kara's crotch, in this particular instance. "Why are you in your underwear?"

Kara blinked. "My clothes are in the wash."

"And you have only the one set?"

"Oh, no, I have a bunch," Kara assured her.

"But not enough to stay decent in public?"

"Why are you giving me such a hard time about this? Your clothes are covered in blood."

"It's not mine, though," the stranger repeated, turning back to stuff the last of her things in the wash and turn it on.

"That's not necessarily reassuring," Kara told her. "I don't know you. What if you're a murderous werewolf?"

"I—are you really accusing me of being a werewolf? It isn't even the full moon."

"Maybe you just transform at night, regardless."

"It's night right now," the stranger pointed out.

Kara shrugged. "You could be a murderous anything, really."

The stranger gave her a pointed onceover. Without lingering on her briefs, this time. "Is your badge also in the wash?"

"My—? Oh, I'm not a cop or anything," Kara told her.

The stranger climbed slowly to her feet, leaning her hip against the washing machine and fixing Kara with an unimpressed look. "Mm hm. Maybe you shouldn't interrogate strangers about their dirty laundry, then," she said.

Finally eye to eye, Kara could get a good look at the stranger for the first time. Shorter than Kara even in pumps, she still had an air of command about her, like a firefighter, or a math teacher. Her hair was in a bun so tight it must have been painful, and she wore rather heavy makeup that failed to conceal a freshly scabbed over cut at the edge of her eyebrow.

On closer observation, she seemed to be breathing shallowly, never standing quite straight. Kara would bet on bruised ribs.

Kara forced herself not to reach over to her. This was not a patient. "Do you need help?" Kara asked quietly.

"No," the stranger said coolly. "I told you. It wasn't my blood."

Kara stood silently for a moment, the urge to press superseded by the understanding that her intervention wasn't wanted. Then her machine started beeping loudly.

She could feel the stranger's eyes on her as she extracted a shirt and pair of sweats at random and quickly pulled them on. They were toasty warm from the dryer, their artificial floral scent just slightly too strong. She gathered the rest of her laundry into her big plastic bag and headed for the exit. At the door, she turned back. The stranger was still watching, arms folded and body tilted subtly away, observant but unapproachable.

Kara waved at her. "Well, bye," she said lamely. "Take care of yourself."

Inexplicably, the stranger uncrossed her arms and waved back.

.

.

 **2**

Three weeks later, when Kara next remembered that clothes needed washing sometimes, Andrey's Laundromat was empty. That was most often the case this late at night, of course. Once in a while she'd encounter a college student or a nightshift worker or just somebody like her, disorganized and a little airheaded; but generally, she was used to doing her laundry alone.

There was no reason, really, to keep looking over her shoulder, checking to see if maybe Bloody Laundry Woman was there with her bloody laundry, see if the cut on her eyebrow had healed.

There was reason to feel oddly worried when she never materialized.

.

.

A week after that, the idea of laundry miraculously popped into her head even though at least two of her shirts hadn't been worn even once. Usually, in a scenario like this, she'd take the time to go to Alfassi & Sons (open 8:00 to 17:30), where she knew her money would go to a local, family owned business and her clothes would come out smelling gentle and comforting and somehow look newer than they went in.

This time, though, she had the strange urge to go back to Andrey's, anyway. Preferably at night. Around 2 a.m., or so.

But Bloody Laundry Woman wasn't there today, either.

Kara leaned her butt against the washing machine's edge and started going through the articles she'd bookmarked for her spare time. She picked one she'd been saving for a truly direly boring situation; this one certainly qualified.

And that's when Bloody Laundry Woman walked in the door.

"Oh, wow," she said as she saw Kara, actually taking a half step back as if shocked. "You're clothed, this time."

Kara tugged at her shorts. "Yeah, I remembered to leave something clean, for once." She looked at Bloody Laundry Woman. "And you actually aren't bloody."

The woman gave a funny little curtsy and walked over to the machine directly facing Kara, which made it very easy to examine her fairly discreetly. She was standing properly upright, her chest rising and falling easily. When she crouched to load the machine, there was no hesitation or stiffness to her movement. She'd clearly healed well. A few weeks would do that.

Kara looked away, trying not to broadcast her relief.

"So, do you come here often?" Bloody Laundry Woman was looking directly at her. She'd asked her a question. A come-on kind of question.

Taken aback, Kara could only manage a mumbled, "Um, yeah."

The woman raised her eyebrows. "Live nearby?"

Kara nodded. "Pretty close."

"You were so much more verbal last time," the woman observed. "Is it the clothes? Do you only express yourself freely while partially nude?"

Kara couldn't help cracking a smile. "I'm surprised you're talking to me," she admitted.

Bloody Laundry Woman smirked. "I had a pretty bad day last time we met. But you weren't the _worst_ part of it."

Kara scratched at a loose thread in the hem of her shirt. "Oh. Thanks."

"I made sure to wear this, in case of any further accusations of lycanthropy." The woman raised her hand, displaying the thick ring on her middle finger. "It's about 92% silver, I hope that's sufficient."

Kara grinned. "I don't know. That 8% could easily cover the surface area, insulating your skin."

"Aw, come on, it's an alloy," the woman protested. "Fine. I'll bring the silver bullets next time."

 _Next time._ What a concept. "Do you live around here, then?"

The woman nodded. "I just moved to National City recently," she said. "Got a job offer I just could not refuse."

"Oh? Which one?"

"Debugger for Edge Global," the woman replied. "Glamorous, isn't it?"

Kara grimaced sympathetically. "Sounds extremely boring."

"Oh, yes," the woman said, with feeling. "What about you? If it's too fascinating, please lie."

Kara laughed delightedly. Bloody Laundry Woman was surprisingly fun. "Physical therapist," Kara told her, wiggling her fingers.

"Working with your hands," said the woman, a certain edge to her smile.

"It's pretty wonderful," Kara gushed. Plenty of people hated their jobs, but she was pretty lucky. "It's challenging work, the human body is such a complex tool. And I get to help people."

"I bet you're _very_ good at it," the woman said with that same edge.

Kara could feel herself flush. "Thanks. Um—"

"Don't say you'd bet I'm very good at debugging," the woman cut her off.

Kara laughed. "Okay, I won't."

"Do you any good work stories to tell?"

They chatted on, their conversation shifting from work to politics to stain removal techniques. When Kara's laundry started beeping, she was shocked to discover over an hour had passed.

.

.

 **3**

The next time Kara attended her early morning appointment at Andrey's, Bloody Laundry Woman was already there. She was sitting on one of the long plastic benches, wearing slacks and a low cut blouse, her legs crossed at the ankle, reading. The machine next to her was already rumbling, unfortunately, so Kara didn't have a chance to assess the bloodiness of today's laundry.

"Hey there," Kara greeted as she set about loading her own laundry.

The woman didn't look up from her book. "Mm," was her only response.

Kara unbuttoned her pants. "Mm?"

"Mm hm," said the woman.

Kara peeled off her tank top, added it in and turned on the machine. She indulged in a long stretch, feeling a couple vertebrae pop. It'd been a long day.

"What are you reading?" she asked the woman, gripping an elbow behind her head.

"Practical Dismemberment: Professional Tips for the Amateur Enthusiast," Bloody Laundry Woman answered in perfect monotone.

Kara adjusted her shitty old sports bra, its band having ridden up the underside of her tits, and walked over to sit on the opposite side of the Laundromat bench. _Energy Harvesting Systems: Principles, Modeling and Applications_ , proclaimed the stark red and blue cover of the woman's book.

"You're not a very honest person, are you?" Kara observed out loud.

The woman glanced at her over her decidedly inoffensive book. Her gaze dragged over Kara's chest, and Kara struggled not to fidget with her bra some more. "By contrast, you're exceptionally open," said the woman. "With one aspect in particular, at least." Her eyes dipped down for a quick second.

Kara crossed her legs. She was wearing bikini style briefs today, the only clean pair she had left, and some pubic hair inevitably stuck out.

Something occurred to her suddenly. "Oh, does it bother you?" she asked, feeling a belated pang of guilt in her stomach. "I just realized maybe you've been trying to tell me I'm making you uncomfortable and I totally missed it."

The woman let out an abrupt, croaky, endearing laugh. "You really are just that sincere, aren't you?" Tucking a finger between the book's pages, she shut it and put it aside. "I don't mind. I think you're charming." She looked at Kara, bold and direct. "We've been flirting, I thought you realized."

Kara returned her gaze, and they just stared at each other for several seconds. It was a strange moment, and yet it felt as if something had been communicated between them rather effectively.

Kara uncrossed her legs.

"Read me something from your book," she said.

Bloody Laundry Woman lifted an eyebrow at her. Then she parted the book around her finger. "How to dismember a body," she recited dryly. "Step one: choosing the right bone saw for _you_."

Kara laughed. "Alright, alright. Wanna listen to bad outdated pop music instead?"

The woman pulled her finger out of the book at that, closing it without marking her place. "I'd love that, actually," she said, for once sounding entirely sincere. When Kara offered her an earphone and started playing Britney Spears, she seemed genuinely delighted.

They'd gone through two of Kara's favorite workout/cheering up playlists by the time the woman's dryer went off. She pulled out the earphone, and in the process of handing it over to Kara, somehow managed to brush the outside of her thigh, making the fine hairs there stand on end.

Kara watched her fold her clothes neatly into a large zipock bag, tucking it into an even larger canvas one. When she finished, Kara handed her the fake murder book.

"I'll see you in two weeks?" the woman asked as she took it.

Kara beamed at her. Unsuccessfully trying to temper her excitement, she simply nodded silently.

.

.

 **4**

Seventy five minutes on average of laundry and drying tended to pass pretty slowly. The rows of identical white, square machines under the white fluorescent lights didn't help. It was the sort of atmosphere, Kara discovered, that lent itself much more easily to deep, personal conversations than to work emails or games of Two Dots.

"Are you religious?" Bloody Laundry Woman asked her casually as she settled more comfortably against one of the inactive machines, propping her feet on the bench.

"I'm Jewish, but I'm not really religious, though," Kara said, stretched out next to her. "I do have, kind of, these weird spiritual moments sometimes. Like you know when you take your glasses off for a second, and it's early morning, and you're bad at cleaning, and you sit on the couch and disturb a bunch of dust motes, and they catch the light and they're a little blurry without your glasses on? And you wonder how many people have been in a situation like yours and seen something just like this, and how many of them thought these floating pieces of bacteria and dead skin looked sort of… magical?"

Bloody Laundry Woman laughed at her. "I don't think so, no."

Kara grinned, excited at the challenge. "Or when you have a conversation with someone that you don't understand at all, you realize the contexts of your lives and your ideals are so different that there's no overlap, no common ground to build from, but you listen to them and it's like slowly learning a new language, and you can almost feel your perception shifting to accommodate it?"

"A bit like this conversation, then?"

Kara pushed fearlessly on. "Or when you love someone so much, one day you see them picking their nose and feel like you've just had a revelation?"

Bloody Laundry Woman went quiet at that. She gathered her legs closer to her and started playing with the seam of the sock peeking out of her shoe.

"I have a memory of laying my head on my lover's stomach," she said finally, her voice lowered. "After lunch, not even sex or a date or anything intimate. I had my ear pressed there, and I could suddenly hear it so clearly, magnified. Like the inside of a seashell. It was just digestion, nothing romantic, but I had this thought, that I was listening to the inner workings of her, her body. It was a strangely intense moment." She looked over at Kara. Her expression seemed both tender and almost verging on combative. "Maybe I would call that spiritual."

Kara met her gaze, and found it hard to look away. There'd been a magnetism to her, from the start, and now Kara had finally passed the event horizon. She felt her body orient itself toward her as if of its own accord. Like a sunflower. Bloody Laundry Woman placed a bracing palm between them, half leaning over, eyebrows drawn and hair in her face, and in that moment it all seemed rather inevitable.

Naturally, that was when the beeping started.

Kara physically jumped at that. She'd been so absorbed in the intimacy of the moment, she'd forgotten they were sitting on the filthy floor of a fucking laundromat.

The woman made a huffy little sound, of resignation or annoyance. She tilted her head, giving Kara a particular look, and hauled herself to her feet where she started stuffing her laundry into a bag, forgoing her usual meticulous folding.

"Um—hold on—" Kara stumbled. The woman paused, waiting. Kara reached over to rummage in her bag and fished out one of the loose business cards that always found their way there. She silently held it out. Bloody Laundry Woman bent down and took it.

Kara watched her leave with her neat ziplock bag full of crumpled up laundry, feeling much more flustered and off-kilter than an aborted kiss with an unnamed woman at a 24 hour laundromat should rightly warrant.

.

.

 **5**

Two weeks later, Kara entered Andrey's Laundromat to discover that Bloody Laundry Woman had decided to take a page out of her own book: she was sitting primly on the bench, a tablet in her lap, wearing flats, a skirt, a lacy black bra, and nothing else.

She perked up when she noticed Kara, her posture straightening, a smile blooming. "Fancy seeing you here," she greeted Kara.

Kara grinned back at her. "You look festive."

"Oh, this?" She leaned back and indicated the length of her bare torso with a sweeping, dramatic gesture. "Just a little something I threw together at the last minute."

She blinked meaningfully at Kara. Or maybe it was just a very inept wink or something.

Kara giggled as she stripped off her own clothes. She felt practically giddy. Every single thing she discovered about Bloody Laundry Woman was just beyond enchanting.

"How was your week?" Kara asked, walking over and offering her a hand. "Or, um, fortnight?"

"Boring," the woman said, accepting Kara's help in getting up. "Much better now, though." She slid her fingers over Kara's palm and onto her wrist, gripping lightly.

Kara shivered. "Oh. Me, too," she said nonsensically.

The woman stroked her thumb across the inside of Kara's forearm and guided Kara's hand to rest on her waist. Kara automatically placed her other palm in a parallel position. This close up, Kara could clearly see the woman's expanded pupils, the elevated breath lifting and lowering her chest.

The woman pressed her palm to Kara's stomach, lightly rubbing over the curly hair there and the hidden abdominals underneath.

"Don't you need to wash these, too?" she teased, flicking the elastic of Kara's briefs with the very tip of a finger.

"Um—" Kara mumbled, praying her excitement wasn't visible through her underwear. "Maybe—next time?"

"Mm," the woman hummed, running blunt fingernails along the top of Kara's briefs, tracing the line where fabric met skin. "Next time."

She leaned into Kara's body, her bra a suggestion of a tickle against Kara's skin. She let her fingertips slide upward, pressing into the curve of Kara's belly, skimming over her navel. "I'd like that, Kara."

Kara trembled under her touch. "How—how did you know my name?" she stammered.

The woman's expression shifted from aroused to aroused but confused. "You gave me your business card." She withdrew her hand from Kara's body. "Did you forget?"

"Oh, right," Kara said, blinking through the haze of her own arousal. "You never called."

"No," the woman agreed. She leaned further away, breaking the contact between them completely.

"Why not?" Kara asked.

"I have some deep, dark secrets, Kara," Bloody Laundry Woman said, against all odds, in total seriousness.

Kara couldn't help laughing at that. "Well, I know. You made a pretty ominous first impression."

"Your assumptions may not have been far off," the woman said, unusually subdued. She glanced aside and briefly touched one hand with her other before continuing. "Have you heard the name Luthor?"

"As in Lex, Lillian and Lionel? The serial killer family? Who hasn't?"

The woman nodded. "I'm Lena," she said, her voice tight. At Kara's blank look, she added, "Um. Lena Luthor. The—the sister."

A loud rushing sound filled Kara's ears, the abrupt mood crash leaving her slightly dizzy. She stumbled back a step, then another.

The bare skin of her stomach where Lena had touched tingled, an awareness of her vulnerability blooming. Suddenly the situation didn't seem so funny. "Huh."

Lena didn't move an inch, her hands hanging slack and still at her sides. "I didn't kill anyone," she said evenly. "That day, there was an assassination attempt. On me. It's documented. You could look it up."

"The blood," Kara muttered.

Lena nodded once. "The assassin's. I, I didn't kill him." Her face twitched strangely, and Kara backed up another step. "Google it. Please."

"Uh huh." Kara glanced furtively from the exit to the washing machine interface indicating 18 minutes remaining. "Sure."

Lena followed her gaze. She wrapped her arms around herself, taking a step back as well. "Don't worry. I'll leave. I don't want you to have to walk around in wet clothes."

Despite her words, she stood still for several long moments, looking at the floor by Kara's feet. Kara instantly regretted wearing her flimsy rubber flip flops rather than running shoes.

Lena opened her mouth as if to say something, then shook her head and finally started gathering her belongings. Lastly, she picked up a carefully folded satin shirt laid on the bench and slipped it on. Her fingers fumbled over a couple of the buttons.

She didn't look back as she went out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

After her near miss at the Laundromat, Kara decided to start taking the longer route to Alfassi & Sons on a regular basis from now on. She somehow doubted Lena would show up at Andrey's again, but there was no need to risk it.

She tried her best to avoid thinking about Lena. She didn't google her. The Luthors killed by strapping bombs to people, exposing them to Geneva-banned gases, injecting them with genetically engineered bacteria; actual real life supervillain shit. The last thing Kara wanted was to actively seek out more of that kind of horror.

She'd almost kissed a murderer. A murderer's accomplice, at the very least. She knew Lena was never charged with anything, but how could anyone live in a home with _three_ serial killers and remain unaware? She must have known something. She must have been protecting them, protecting the interests of her family's industry and wealth, while they were going around butchering people.

And anyway, why would someone like _Lena Luthor_ , raised in the lap of luxury, probably slated for a top position at LuthorCorp from infancy—why would someone like that work as a fucking debugger for Edge Global? Why would she need to wash her bloody laundry at a shitty 24 hour laundromat, if she didn't have something to hide?

Kara tried her best to avoid thinking about Lena. But her best wasn't… great.

Lena had been interesting, and funny, and provocative, and so clearly interested in women, and so clearly interested in _Kara_ —

"You should have told me the first time you saw her," Alex told her, poking her with the spoon she'd stolen while Kara was busy ruminating. "Come on, Kara, bloody clothes at a sketchy laundromat in the middle of the night? You know I would've run a background check on her like _that_." She snapped her fingers.

"What would you even have searched? _'Bloody Laundry Woman real name'_?"

Alex shrugged, wearing her invincible civil servant expression. "I would've found a way. Anything to save my little sister from developing a sad crush on a serial killer."

"You're so comforting," Kara grumbled.

"Aw." Alex pulled her into a quick and bruising hug. "I'm glad you weren't hurt."

Kara made a face. "My _feelings_ were hurt."

"That's what the vegan ice cream and trashy lesbian movies are for," Alex replied cheerfully, handing her back the spoon.

Kara took a big, resigned bite of the less-than-creamy banana and walnut ice cream while Alex queued up the next mindblowingly bad film.

.

.

"Look at this," James said to her one day on their lunch break at work, placing a tablet and a sandwich under Kara's nose.

"Brought a bribe, smart." Kara promptly set about unwrapping the sandwich.

"I know you don't like to waste any designated eating periods."

"What's this then?" Kara mumbled around a large bite of pastrami, picking up the tablet.

"Experimental HIV treatment research," James told her. "Really avante-garde stuff."

The tablet displayed page 73 of a presumably academic paper, extremely densely written. With college pre-med, a physical therapy degree and some independent research in her free time, Kara could barely get a vague idea of what she was looking at. As James had said, though, it seemed to be some rather daring, unconventional theory.

"How did you come by this?"

"Your laundry girlfriend," James said, tapping to the top of the paper.

 _'Jack A. Spheer, MD; Samantha E. Arias, PhD; Lena K. Luthor, PhD; 2012'_ , it read.

A year before the first body was found.

"I don't know what to think about this," Kara admitted quietly.

James shared the link with Kara and put the tablet away. "She was doing some good work, once upon a time."

Kara nodded vaguely. This didn't necessarily mean anything. She could still have shielded her family. She could still have hurt people.

But in 2012, Lena Luthor was trying to do something good.

.

.

Kara read the entirety of Lena's (and Arias and Spheer's) research throughout the following work week. It had to do with the printing of proteins onto sheets of paper and measuring of infected macrophage cells and genetic modification of CD4 cells. They proposed theoretical technologies focused on cost reduction and wide availability. Kara didn't exactly have the tools to assess the viability of any of this, of course.

But she couldn't stop thinking of Lena at the laundromat, bold and flirtatious to an outrageous degree; Lena at university, before the fall, working on printing proteins onto paper to lower the expenses of antiviral research; Lena, a _Luthor_ , sister and daughter to three of the most brutal killers in recent memory.

She had to google her, obviously. There was no way she could avoid it anymore. She almost felt silly for waiting weeks to do it, and probably moping about it all the while.

So she settled on the couch, Sunday evening, with her laptop and a bag of cocoa puffs, and set to googling.

.

One of the first results that came up was a video interview from 2016.

"A complete nuclear family of murderers is something we've never seen before," the interviewer was saying.

"Not a complete one, no," Lena interjected.

"Right, of course. But some are wondering how it would be possible for a white sheep, as it were, to live in a house full of wolves and never notice anything suspicious?"

"I attended boarding school between 2002 and 2008," Lena said, as if reciting an old refrain. "Then I was off to college. I spent only four summers at home, ages nine to twelve. I don't recall serving as accessory to murder at those times."

"What was it like, being raised by sadistic killers?"

A muscle jumped in Lena's cheek. She'd probably been clenching her teeth, but for a moment she appeared almost to smile. "A mixed bag," she said finally.

"Are you worried there might be a genetic component?"

Lena scoffed softly. "There's no gene for hurting people," she said. "But I am worried, yes. I'm worried about a lot of things. Wouldn't you be?"

"I suppose I would," the interviewer allowed. "I understand you've lost your positions at Met U and the Green Metropolis Initiative. With all of your family's assets seized or frozen, would you say employment is one of your worries?"

Lena openly laughed at that. "Yeah," she said, looking kind of tickled. "It is. It really is. What a normal worry to have, right?"

"With everything going on in your life, it must seem refreshing," the interviewer said kindly.

Kara clicked out of the video halfway through Lena's breathy answering laugh.

.

The full transcripts of the Luthor trials were publically available online. But Kara definitely didn't have the time or patience to go through over two years' worth of legal nonsense.

So she only read Lex's.

Of course, Lex Luthor, head of a multibillion dollar corporation at the time of his arrest, had hired the best attorneys money could buy. His team's strategy focused on throwing out all DNA evidence by questioning the chain of custody. They supplied sixteen different eyewitness accounts placing Lex in a different state during five of the alleged murders. They apparently showed videos of Lex in medical school to prove his scalpel technique didn't match that of the killer's.

And then Lena was sworn in, and she came with a _binder_. She introduced exhibit after exhibit, printouts of emails and recorded phone conversations and receipts from purchases dating back to her early adolescence. She refuted dozens of the defense's statements, big and small, from alibis to false claims of charitable donations. She made the cross examination seem like a joke.

Slowly, methodically, painstakingly, she broke down Lex's defense.

There was undoubtedly something kind of scary about that. But it certainly wasn't the testimony of someone who was trying to protect her murderous family.

.

There was one last thing Kara just had to look up. Steeling herself, she typed in ' _Lena Luthor assassination attempt'_.

She clicked the first link without much consideration, and a fullscreen image of Lena greeted her. Drenched in blood from chest to mid thigh, hands _dripping_ with it, her posture uneven and her eyes brimming with tears.

Kara almost physically flung her laptop aside in her haste to click away from the image.

She was much more careful with her next choices, blocking images and picking more reputable sources. She gathered the story of that day piecemeal.

Lena had gone to visit her brother in prison the day before. Obviously there were no details about whatever went on between them, but journalists stationed outside the prison reported Lena looking upset and refusing to comment.

The next day, a mercenary infiltrated Edge Global, observed Lena's movement throughout the day, isolated her in an underground parking lot around 10 p.m., and attacked her.

Lena had taken a baton swing to the side and temple before somehow managing to escape to an open area, draw a pocket knife, and stab her assailant in the neck. According to reports, she then called 911, administered basic emergency aid to the man, and a response team was able to stabilize him.

At this point Kara was just about ready to burst out crying. Dawn was starting to break, she was exhausted and wound tight enough to snap, and Lena, the _fucking_ idiot, had tried to save her would-be killer's life harder than Kara had ever tried to keep track of her damn _laundry_ schedule.

Apparently there was some video footage available from a nearby security camera, but Kara had no interest whatsoever in watching that. She shut her laptop screen with slightly more force than necessary, set her alarm to ring in an hour and fifteen minutes, and went angrily to sleep.

.

.

.

Kara called Alex on her way to work that morning.

"Hey, Kara, what's up?" Alex answered within two rings.

"I think Lena Luthor is innocent," Kara immediately blurted out. "No, I think Lena Luthor is a _good person_."

Alex laughed. "Of course you do. I'm shocked this wasn't your starting position, actually. She must have really scared you."

She had. But Kara wasn't about to concede that now. "Alex, I'm not just saying this. I did my research. She's not guilty."

"'Not guilty' and 'good person' are two different things."

"She testified against them. They tried to _kill_ her. She was trying to, like, cure HIV!"

"You can be evil and still have a job and fight with your family," Alex pointed out. "And if she didn't know anything, how could she testify against them anyway?"

Alex's arguments were frustratingly similar to the ones that had gone on in Kara's head. "I'm sending you some links," she said, rifling through the bookmarks on her phone. "Just look at them, okay?"

Alex hummed affirmatively. "Just keep in mind that _I'm_ not in love with her, and adjust your expectations accordingly."

Kara terminated the call without saying goodbye, a heartbeat away from flipping off her own phone.

.

.

James was predictably much more sympathetic.

"I told you I had a feeling it was more nuanced than it seemed," he said, self-satisfied.

"It's not nuanced at all!" Kara protested. "She's just a fucking saint!"

James laughed. "You've certainly gone on a journey. From devil to angel in one googling session."

"She'd _told_ me to google her," Kara said. "She's gonna be so _smug_."

"She sounds fun," said James. "I'd love to meet her."

"You'd probably like her. You have a high tolerance for bad jokes."

James nodded. "With the boyfriend, that's a given."

Kara pictured a scenario like that, introducing Lena to Alex, James and Winn. Eating a big dinner together, playing one of Alex's overly complicated board games. She wondered if Lena would get invested and become competitive or if she'd be too cool for board games. She never got around to asking Lena what kind of food she liked, such a critical question. A real oversight.

James touched her upper arm. "Kara."

"Hm?"

He pointed at her lunch. "Your chili's getting cold."

James fixed her with a pointed look as she finally started eating.

.

.

"Jonn is on your side," Alex informed her over the phone a couple days later.

Kara perked up. Alex's former boss who'd left his job to become a masseur was one of the few people who could change her mind about anything.

"He interviewed the Luthors at one point, apparently, and had some sort of interaction with Lena," Alex continued. "He just had a _gut feeling_ about her." Kara could practically hear Alex roll her eyes.

"Weren't you the one who always insisted he was a mind reader?"

"Don't gloat," Alex commanded. "Anyway, I'm reserving judgment. I guess. Not that it really matters, you don't have any contact with her anyway."

Kara froze. She hadn't even thought about that.

How had this not occurred to her? Lena had her number, but she was unlikely to call. The last time they saw each other, Kara made it clear she believed Lena was dangerous. Kara was conducting this crusade to absolve her in the eyes of the people in her life for no real reason. Lena _wasn't_ in Kara's life.

"At least I could get some closure, I guess," Kara muttered.

"Hey." Alex's tone immediately softened. "It's not a bad thing to care very strongly. Sorry I made fun of you."

"Yeah," Kara muttered. "Um. Bye."

"Kara—" Alex started saying as she hung up.

.

.

Kara continued her moping streak for several days after that. She was coming close to beating her second best record. Alex was not impressed, though James said he was.

One evening she was lying on her couch, attention split between the game show running on TV and the crossword puzzle she was solving on her phone, when the show was interrupted by a local news update.

"A parked car in National City has been blown up this evening outside an Edge Global corporate building," the news anchor reported somberly. "The apparent target: Lena Luthor, daughter of convicted murderers Lionel and Lillian Luthor. Ms. Luthor, along with two bystanders, Andy Patton and Toni Bailey, have been evacuated to National City General Hospital. All three are in stable condition. We're joined now by Sara Nunez, senior crime correspondent. What can you tell us about this attack, Sara?"

Kara was off the couch and pulling her shoes on over bare feet before the reporter had finished saying the word _hospital_. She'd grabbed her keys and had her hand on the door handle when her phone rang, and she answered instinctively.

"Kara," Alex's voice said, serious but attempting to soothe preemptively. Her delivering bad news voice.

Kara clutched the keys in her hand, the urge to start running making her buzz. "I _know_."

"Right. Where are you? Go back to your apartment," Alex commanded. "Don't go giving yourself a stress ulcer, okay? She's stable, so the worst shit's behind her, whatever the case. Visiting hours are over right now, and she's probably sleeping anyway. And none of this is in any way even vaguely your fault. Get some sleep, go to work, buy a potted plant or something and go see her tomorrow, all right?"

Kara rubbed her face and jumped up and down twice, trying to release some pent up tension. "Yeah," she forced out. "You're right. Thanks, Alex."

"Hey, Kara," Alex said gently.

"What?"

"Don't hang up. _I'm_ hanging up."

Their connection terminated in the middle of Kara's startled laugh.

Kara put down her keys and took off her shoes. Her sister was often infuriatingly efficient in ways that Kara found genuinely stressful, but when it really counted, she gave good advice. Kara fully intended to follow it.

She couldn't fall asleep, though. So she plugged in her earphones and listened to six of her favorite workout/cheering up playlists in a row, instead.

 **6**

The short period of time between Kara giving her name at the hospital's front desk the next day and being told she can go through seemed interminable. Once she was physically standing outside Lena's room, though, holding her stupid potted plant, it suddenly seemed way too soon. She hadn't prepared any grand speeches. She didn't even bring a nice personalized card. All she had was a fucking cactus.

But she thought of Lena, flushed and topless, touching her hand nervously in preparation for confessing something truly frightening, and stepped through.

Lena didn't look all that bad for getting almost blown up. She looked pale and miserable and some bandages peeked out from under her blanket and gown, but her eyes were sharp and she was reclining on the bed with three pillows under her head and one bent leg propped on the opposite knee, like some sort of grumpy, slightly injured emperor.

When she noticed Kara, she lowered her leg and drew herself up, putting the phone she'd been fiddling with aside.

"Hi," she said, hoarse and hesitant.

"Hey," Kara replied, cracking a smile and raising the potted succulent in her hands.

Lena indicated the bedside cabinet and Kara placed the plant there. There was only one other get-well trinket on it, a heart shaped lollipop with a note attached.

"So…" Kara said as she claimed one of the stools in the room, a safe distance from the bed. "I googled you."

"I figured," Lena croaked, her lips twitching. "The washing machines here are for staff use only."

Kara dipped her head. "I liked your thesis," she said.

"Yeah?" Lena practically lit up at that. A ball of warmth bloomed in Kara's stomach.

"I understood about… a hundredth of it, give or take," Kara admitted.

"I appreciate you reading it," Lena said earnestly. "No one would touch any of my work with a ten foot pole, nowadays. I couldn't get a paper titled 'How to Get Rich Quick in Academia' peer reviewed."

"Is that a very popular field of study?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

Kara grinned. It was remarkable how easy it was to get sucked into the rhythm of conversation with Lena, even now. It was a pointed reminder of the connection she'd thought they'd had. The connection she'd kind of broken.

Kara tilted her body forward, leaning on her knees. "I'm sorry," she said quietly.

"Don't apologize," Lena replied instantly, almost talking over her. "You were just being smart."

"I made assumptions," Kara said.

Lena shook her head. "I'm glad you were cautious. I'm kind of tired of reckless people, to tell you the truth."

Kara rubbed her palms over her thighs uneasily. "Well, I don't want you to forgive me so easily, though," she told Lena.

Lena's lips quirked again. "Should I make an unreasonable demand of you, then?"

Kara nodded solemnly. "Please."

Lena lifted herself onto her elbows, shifted her head so she was almost looking down her nose at Kara, and said imperiously: "Kiss me."

Kara's breath caught. Lena's face, bare and bruised, held a challenge and a promise all at once. Here was the culmination of so many open-ended feelings, stretched and stalled over several disorienting months.

But then Kara dragged her stool toward the bed, and it made an awful screeching sound the entire way there, and by the time she was within smooching distance the whole ambiance was gone.

Lena sighed. "Well, whatever," she said, and grabbed Kara by the front of her shirt.

It was a bit awkward, making out with an injured person. The position was weird and there were tubes in some places and the smells weren't great, not to mention the plastic curtain that was the only barrier between them and the patient in the next bed over. Not exactly the most typical first kiss. But then, none of this thing between them had ever been exactly typical.

And Lena kissed like prayer. With eyes closed and her brow scrunched up, and a single-minded intensity that hit Kara right between the thighs. There was none of that flippancy, none of the endless teasing that Kara had come to associate with her so strongly. Lena kissed her like she was making love to her mouth.

When Kara broke away, it was not to breathe but to _pant_. Everything felt elevated. And Lena was now staring at her with the kind of rapt focus that certainly appeared to be potentially lethal.

"I have a very important question to ask you," Kara told her breathlessly. Lena looked at her, and looked, and nodded. "Do you have any bloody laundry that needs taking care of?"

Lena's laugh was a rough, strange, stupidly attractive sound, to match a rough, strange, stupidly attractive woman. Before she could make some sort of terrible answering quip, Kara leaned in and kissed her again.


End file.
